


Immeasurable Heart

by Lesa



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Coney Island, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Irish Sarah Rogers, Irish Steve Rogers, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Premature Babies, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 18:19:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13529910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lesa/pseuds/Lesa
Summary: A chance trip to Coney Island by the newly immigrated Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Rogers starts the young family on a journey exploring life, friendship, family, and love. Eventual Stucky (for now just gear up to Stucky-kid-fic!)





	Immeasurable Heart

**Author's Note:**

> First thing posted in a long while. Much inspiration from the great [Kells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kells/pseuds/Kells) and later inspiration from [mandarou](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10878852/chapters/24170622) to come. Lots of notes at the bottom, since I don't want to clutter you all up here! Let me know what you think. :)

It had been almost a week. Joseph Rogers looked out the window of the train car, then down to where his Sarah chatting with Cousin Claire and sighed. His sweet girl paused her conversation to smile up at him quick before continuing to explain her mother’s anti-nausea tincture, her golden hair shimmering in the sunlight. It had been a nearly week and they needed something. He wasn’t going to have them living with Claire and her American husband for too much longer. He loved his distant cousin, he did. He would just like to not be sleeping in her living room. 

He needed a job, even if they’d only gotten to America on this past Monday. He refused to give enough time for the neighborhood gossips to get their teeth into him and his precious girl. His Sarah wanted to put in her work too; they weren’t going to be the layabouts Claire said that so many Irish were still thought of as. There would be no dragging the Rogers name through the muck and grime of the Irish that had come before them just because of their shared home country. They weren’t any sort of layabouts. Sarah was a nurse! He was a furnituremaker! They were hard workers; they just needed a chance! 

Joseph relaxed his white-knuckled grip on the overhead handle and looked under the brim of his hat at Thomas standing beside him, but the chemist just stared out the grimy window at the world rolling by. He was a good man, just not so good at conversation. Joseph understood that, despite his ma always saying he must’ve snuck out as a child to go kiss the Blarney. He hadn’t had much of a want to talk since coming back from the Great War. Sarah still loved him, and that was all that mattered. He wanted to do right by her, get them a little apartment all their own. He needed a job for that. No one wanted a former Irish Guard working for them, especially as a junior furnituremaker. It was disheartening; knowing that he wasn’t going to find a position in the craft his father had trained him at from a boy. Part of him wanted to remain hopeful, but he would rather be more hopeful for his Sarah to get a nursing job while he worked at the docks. Money was money, and if they could keep from selling all of the treasures they’d brought from Ireland, he would be pleased.

“Thank you again for taking us out to this island,” he told Thomas slowly, his throat still displeased with the Germans’ gift of White Star gas and his later bouts of purulent bronchitis and influenza. The influenza had delayed their coming for several months. Sarah had wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be coughing in line at Ellis Island, sure as anything from everything she’d heard that his coughing would get him sent back to Ireland. Still, Claire and Thomas had opened their home to them, even with Claire’s belly rounding with their first. His cousin’s husband nodded, idly brushing his fingers over his slim mustache.  
“Want to give you two something extra special,” Thomas smiled. “Coney Island is something extra special.”

The lights and sounds were certainly something, but Joseph didn’t know if he would call them extra special. Too loud and too much, he thought. A spectacle, more than extra special, in his mind. People shouting about sweets, rides, and shows jostled for space in his ears with the beeps, shrieks, and clatters of the very things they were advertising. The flashing lights and overall sounds would have taken him back to the War but for Sarah’s warmth at his side, the scent of hot dogs too close to burning flesh for a moment. They walked on as he fought his mind, his Sarah’s clutch at his arm and murmured prayers drawing him to the present. She could barely stand to look at the ones she whispered to the Heavenly Host to protect, the poor souls being stared in the tents and buildings they passed by. The ‘freaks’, the barkers were calling them, inhuman marvels. He knew how she felt, it wasn’t right, these poor adults and children being stared at. Didn’t matter if they were different, they were still human, no matter what the barkers tried to say. He’d known men with their noses blown clean off, their eyes gone. They were still human. Extra limbs made one no less human than missing limbs in the eyes of God, why should it be so in the eyes of Man?

 _“Seosamh,”_ Sarah tightened her grip to something painful, his name in Gaelic catching his attention almost faster than the pain. _“Seosamh, cuma!”_ He followed her gaze and immediately knew why she’d stopped, even as Claire and Thomas continued on ahead of them, oblivious.

 **Life Begins At The Baby Incubator** , blared the wall above a sideshow's wall of windows. He touched his pocket for the money Thomas had given him so they could ‘have a proper good time’. He didn’t want to take charity, but he didn’t want to sell Mam’s combs yet, not when they looked so pretty in Sarah’s hair. He’d pay his cousin’s husband back, once he found work. His Sarah didn’t need to even ask as he guided her over to the small booth that would take his coin. This wasn't staring at poor souls who were human being treated as inhuman. This was babies being helped to live.

He still had the letters she had written him in his dirt-stained Army satchel, her excitement for their surprise baby palpable and a balm to hang onto in the trenches. He knew how much it had hurt her to lose their little Seamus, born so early and so small. He kept silent through the entire tour, listening numbly as the guide talked about the medical marvel of the incubators. Every child bore the face his Mam had begged to get a picture taken of before they'd buried him. They'd used precious money on extra postage to send him a copy of the picture, and he knew Sarah still wore a copy of it in her locket with a lock of their babe's hair. It hadn’t mattered to his mother that Seamus had died; she’d loved her grandson with everything in her until her own last breath was stolen by influenza. At least Joseph gotten to be there for her funeral, buried next to Pa and the too-small grave for Seamus, lucky himself not to be joining them. If there had been an incubator in Ireland, he thought, he might well be holding his little boy on his shoulders right now. By the time the tour was over he could feel his mask beginning to crack, Sarah’s nails so tight in his coat he thought she could cut through the wool.

At last the tour ended and he led her to a corner of the small gift shop with cards and pictures. He didn’t care about the looks as he wrapped his wife in his arms; confident in the borrowed clothing that none would think them anything but working class New Yorkers overcome by what they had seen, rather than the fresh immigrants they actually were. He wasn't in the mood for harassment over their birth-country. Not now.  
Sarah trembled, clinging to him like she had the night he’d come back for good. Joseph rubbed at her back, rocking her just as he had then, despite how much calmer her reaction was now to how it had been. Resting his chin gently to the side of her almost-fashionable hat, he spotted a small sign nestled among the cards and incubator photographs.  
**‘Nurses wanted. All trained welcome.’**  
_“Mo chroí,”_ he murmured against her hair. “ _Ba mhaith leo altraí._ You could try and work here.”  
_“D'fhéadfainn?”_ She looked up at him, blue eyes red-rimmed with repressed tears. “Really, _Seosamh_?”  
“All you can do is try, _mo chroí_ ,” he told her. “None of the hospitals want you without training again, at least ask. It would be a good job.”  
“I do love babies,” she chuckled wetly, stepping away from him and fanning her face. She was so strong, stronger than him. He left her inside, trying to get a nurse’s attention. She had no need for him to stand there as she talked, so he used part of the remaining coin Thomas had given him to get them a small cone of pink spun sugar to share. Her brilliant smile as she stepped outside told him everything.  
“Doctor Couney wants me to start next week,” she exclaimed, eyes shining as bright as they had at their wedding. “Head Nurse Rickon told me her brother has a construction business. I know it’s not your detail work, my _Seosamh_ , but it’s good work.”  
“If they want me, Sarah, then I’ll do it. We win our bread together,” he told her as they walked back down the boardwalk, sharing bites of sweetness.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Gaelige_ translations:  
>  _Seosamh, féach!_ \- Joseph, look!  
>  _Mo chroí_ \- My heart  
>  _Ba mhaith leo altraí._ \- They want nurses.  
>  _D'fhéadfainn?_ \- I could?
> 
> I tried to keep it so that not having the translation didn't ruin the flow, I hope it worked.  
> Now for the rest of the notes!
> 
> Yes, my Joseph Rogers is a furniture maker like Joseph of the Bible, all puns intended. I was raised Catholic, I couldn't help myself. :P I have him with some bits and pieces of the comic-canon (he was a soldier, born in Ireland), but I don't hold with the alcoholic-abusive Joe Rogers from certain comics. I figure Steve didn't get his stubborn-punkness all from Sarah, so my Joseph is going to be just as stubborn and a man his son can look up to. Seriously, to go from being a furnituremaker to just doing straight carpentry (house frames, etc) is a huge, huge step down. Joseph, being in his twenties, would still be a junior, or apprentice furnituremaker, but like... here are examples of some of the furniture being made in the 1910s and 1920s. For Google purposes, the time period is Art Nouveau, mostly, and working up to Art Deco when Steve is born - the detailed stuff I'm imagining he was trained to do is gorgeous: [Example 1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Bahut_art_nouveau_%28Mus%C3%A9e_des_Beaux-Arts_de_Lyon%29_%285466552530%29.jpg), [Example 2](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/44/80/a9/4480a931a21621a3198822c3894bba6b.jpg), [Example 3](https://theredlist.com/media/.cache/database/design-categorie/here-and-now/1900-1910/french-art-nouveau/louis_majorelle/1468679918-002-louis-majorelle-theredlist.jpg), and [Example 4](https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/hb/hb_1982.246.jpg). 
> 
> Here's my little headcanon for timing of all of this:   
> Joe was in battle on 19 Dec 1915, came out of it with chlorine–phosgene gas poisoning (the Allies called chlorine-phosgene gas "White Star") and a gunshot wound – recuperation for several months in an Army hospital back in Britain, say until March, then hit with “purulent bronchitis” (what many now think is the precursor for the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918, the "purulent bronchitis" of 1916 and 1917 of a few British army bases. Joe ends up coughing until about midsummer – then they’re trying to get their money together to come to America, and boom, influenza again in late 1916. Mam Rogers dies in this bout of influenza. They have to take care of burying her, taking care of the house, etc, and of course that not only costs money but Joe is still coughing (weak Rogers lungs...), so Sarah makes them wait until July 1917 to come over.
> 
> The Baby Incubator sideshow on Coney Island was a real thing, and a hugely important step towards the modern day neonatal intensive care unit. I basically had the idea "Steve had so many health problems growing up, but maybe they weren't helped along by his being born premature (preemie)?", and thus, this fic. It's sort of my love-note to the medical advance that was the incubator (I was also a preemie). Here's some really interesting articles about the guy that brought the Baby Incubators sideshow to reality, and how the incubators at the time worked. [BBC](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36321692>BBC</a>%20and%20<a%20href=) and [Smithsonian](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/man-who-pretended-be-doctor-ran-worlds-fair-attraction-saved-lives-thousands-premature-babies-180960200/). The title is taken from the quote "I may be tiny, but my heart is immeasurable," by Julia Toivonen on the [Li'l Aussie Prems](http://www.lilaussieprems.com.au/) website, an Australian premmie/preemie support group.
> 
> Right now I'm mostly thinking this one story of the boys in their childhoods and up to/through the war - how they meet will differ, all that good jazz - but I'm also considering expanding it, and not just into modern times. There's easily ways that pretty much every Avenger and Avenger "associate" could have been premature, and the ripple effect that would have caused... well, that's what fics are born of. I'll post a flash or one-sentence-fic of all the ones I've got brewing, and if anyone's interested in my expanding on them, please let me know! I need to get better at one-shots. :)
> 
> Also I'm a multi-shipper at heart, so while Stucky is Forever, I also like throwing them a third (or more) - WinterShieldShock is my jam, as is World War Threesome, and _a lot_ of others. If I delve into those, they'll be included in the series, but not this individual fic, if you're a Stucky-only fan, don't fear!
> 
> So, now that I think my note is longer than the chapter, I bid you adieu!


End file.
